by In his farewell address, Joe Biden warned of a rising oligarchy in the United States, saying,
“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.”
He was correct in pointing out that there is an oligarchy in the United States. However, what he leaves out is that the oligarchy is not new, it has been around for a long time. Oligarchy is not an aberration of capitalism, it rose naturally out of the consolidation of market power into a few people, inherent in a winner-take-all system.
The democracy praised in the United States is not a democracy where regular people have control over their lives, their workplaces, or their legislators. Rather, it is a democracy only for business owners. Or in other words, “democracy” in the United States is the dictatorship of the capitalist class.
The Capitalist Class and the Democrats
Donald Trump has many wealthy supporters, many of whom could be seen standing next to him at his inauguration: Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerburg, and Elon Musk. These oligarchs have made a name for themselves in using the platforms which they own to boost the far-right. Since Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, he has radically changed the moderation rules to promote far-right propaganda, allowing even outright Nazis on the platform.
Elon Musk has also made a point of spreading his influence across the world, supporting the far-right AfD in Germany and the Reform party in the United Kingdom. Many are rightly angered by how much power and influence this one person has over the world, yet Trump’s election was not the start of Elon’s sway over our elected officials.
Prior to his courting of Trump, Elon Musk was a strong supporter of the Democratic Party, a stance that was very lucrative for him. He painted an image of himself as an environmental hero trying to save the world through his electric car company. The Democrats aided him in this venture, with Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s environmental plans involving the construction of infrastructure and implementation of tax breaks and subsidies encouraging the expansion of electric car usage, using the terms “EV” and “Tesla” interchangeably.
Prior to his courting of Trump, Elon Musk was a strong supporter of the Democratic Party, a stance that was very lucrative for him. He painted an image of himself as an environmental hero trying to save the world through his electric car company. The Democrats aided him in this venture, with Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s environmental plans involving the construction of infrastructure and implementation of tax breaks and subsidies encouraging the expansion of electric car usage, using the terms “EV” and “Tesla” interchangeably.
Before Elon was the richest man in the world, he had already acquired a company with nearly complete control over the electric vehicle market, and he used his money to buy influence over Obama’s policies. Obama, who won office claiming to support Hope and Change, was quick to bail out Wall Street banks, but not the average American. Barack Obama was in this sense servile to the oligarchs as Trump. The difference? The media actively ignored any influence by Elon or the big banks – we don’t have “oligarchs”, we have “brilliant businessmen.”
Similarly, prior to their cozying up with Trump, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg were very supportive of the Democratic Party. In fact many of the oligarchs still support the party, they play both sides so they always come out on top. However, on a deeper level, the Democratic Party is controlled not by the working class – the class which sells its labor-power for wages – but the capitalist class – the class owns all the factories, businesses, land, and the money which they use to buy politicians.
Today, even the Democrats of the New Deal are gone. On a fundamental level, the Democratic Party is subservient to the capitalist class as a whole. The capitalist class consists not only of the oligarchs, but also smaller business owners. The needs of all capitalists are top in the minds of Democratic politicians.
The Capitalist Class and the State
Ultimately, no matter which party is in power, capitalism and the state are tightly intertwined. The banks and large companies hold immense power over our institutions and leaders and the needs of workers are rarely addressed. The United States is itself not a democracy in the sense that most people mean it. Liberal democracy instead is a veneer for what the United States actually is: an oligarchy, the dictatorship of the capitalist class.
Putting aside the many lobbyists and businessmen which operate within the government and superPACs which play a massive role in deciding who governs, bourgeois democracy is itself designed rigid enough to uphold the capitalist system, while also being flexible enough to accommodate some change when needed to prevent a socialist uprising.
The history of the United States is filled with protest movements, parties, and organizations which challenge the capitalist system but which are suppressed heavily by the capitalist state. BLM uprisings in 2020 calling for the abolition of the police – an institution dedicated to protecting the property of the capitalist class and oppressing people of color – were repeatedly met with harsh crackdowns, sometimes even unmarked vans carrying people away. The Black Panther Party, one of the largest revolutionary socialist organizations in the United States, was repeatedly persecuted by the state and infiltrated by the FBI for their fight against capitalism and the state, and fighting for black liberation. All throughout 2024, when Biden was in charge, student protestors for an end to the genocide in Gaza and ending support for the Israeli state, much of which was the work of YDSA, repeatedly got into conflict with police, even when protests remained non-violent, a trend which has intensified under Trump.
However its history is also filled with hopeful moments – during the Nixon administration, despite being a far-right warmonger, the US enacted some of the most progressive changes in American history, not out of the good of Nixon’s heart, but out of the necessity to from the pressures on him from the masses, who were ready to revolt. Similarly, the FDR administration enacted the New Deal not because FDR was a progressive fighter (he initially ran on a centrist platform), but rather workers won it through escalating class struggle during the great depression. When we fight, we win.
In Lenin’s writings in State and Revolution, he explains that the state is a mediator of the irreconcilable class contradictions. But the state is not a neutral mediator, but an organ of the ruling class. In the context of capitalism, it is the rule of the capitalist class.
When engaging in the fight for democracy, workers should not limit themselves to merely preserving the bourgeois democracy, which for decades has acted against the interests of the working-class, which colonized the Indians, which oppressed black people, and which has led us to where we are today. Much of what was gained under bourgeois democracy, namely the new deal, was fought for by the working class. Workers must take the struggle to its conclusion, and must fight to replace bourgeois democracy with workers’ democracy, i.e. democratic socialism.
Build A Workers’ Party
The Democratic Party and the Republican Party are incapable of fighting oligarchy because they are in large part the beneficiaries of oligarchy, and work to maintain the capitalist system rather than to disrupt and destroy it. We cannot rely on “progressive” capitalists to fight oligarchs of the same class.
Instead, workers need to take the charge in fighting oligarchy, they are the ones with the economic power capable of fighting them directly. Workers at Tesla, Amazon, Facebook, etc. can all organize and shut down the oligarchy, and have the power not just to fight for themselves as is common in many strikes and union efforts, but also to fight for the working-class as a whole. However this fight will not happen on its own, it requires workers actively willing to fight, and workers which not only fight for a better contract, but which fight for an economic system wherein oligarchs are completely removed from control over the economy which workers run.
Furthermore, this fight should be connected to a revolutionary party fighting not merely for the preservation of bourgeois democracy, but for the implementation of true democracy: a workers’ democracy. As the struggle currently exists, there is no revolutionary party fighting for something on such a large scale, however we in Reform & Revolution are actively building a revolutionary current in the largest socialist organization in the United States, the Democratic Socialists of America. We believe that this revolutionary current can be the center of the fight for a revolutionary party in the United States, and encourage as many people as possible to get involved in DSA and build the revolutionary Marxist core by joining R&R.
Featured Image: May Day, Moscow 1928 by Diego Rivera
Diego Pajuelo is a member of Portland DSA and the secretary of its Washington County Branch, and a member of Reform & Revolution Caucus.
